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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29943690">A Bond Over Many Planes</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilolilyrae/pseuds/lilolilyrae'>lilolilyrae</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Old Guard (Movie 2020)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/F, Getting Together, Good Quynh | Noriko, Prompt Fill, The Old Guard Femslash Fortnight</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 23:54:21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,614</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29943690</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilolilyrae/pseuds/lilolilyrae</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>You and your soulmate share the same talents. What one learns, the other can also do... and it gets really interesting when your soulmate is a millennia-old immortal whom you are also dreaming of.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>The Old Guard Femslash Fortnight</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>A Bond Over Many Planes</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/TuskFM/gifts">TuskFM</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>for the fortnight prompt 'alternative universe' and for Em's more specific prompt of <b>'soulmate AU: you and your soulmate share the same talents. What one learns, the other can also do.'</b></p><p>Long author's note ahead, because I loved this prompt and while I was only able to write a one-shot, I just have so many thoughts! It fits so well, especially as they're immortals and just have So Many skills that they could share... And after living together for a while, Andy &amp; Quynh would definitely use it to their advantage with always one focusing on eg the language of a country they're travelling to and another learning a new fighting style... Also for post-canon Quynh, it would help her a lot to still have her aka Andromache's skillset instead of losing a lot through the time she spent drowning...<br/>How would this kind of skill sharing work though? Bc I was just thinking, it would be pretty damn weird if a newborn Quynh could talk in however many languages Andy speaks xD but then I'm thinking that that would bever problematic not just in that case but for normal mortals with even just 1+year age differences, too... So I'd say that when there's an age difference, a child gains more and more of their older soulmates skills growing up, and the skills line up completely once they're 18-20 or something. For the older person, they'd just gain whatever additional skills their soulmate slowly learns, so when Quynh's like one, Andy would be able to somewhat understand and only slightly speak Vietnamese.... and sixteen-year-old Quynh would impress/terrify everyone by knowing several martial arts better than her teachers, speaking the languages of many foreign merchants and being able to sneak up to everybody! xD</p><p>Oh man, there are so many ideas, it took me ages to decide what exactly to write about xD this AU deserves a proper fanfic, &amp; if sb wants to do just that incorporating my ideas, feel free, just credit me &amp; let me know so I can read it &lt;3</p><p> </p><p>hope you'll enjoy this!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  
</p><p> </p><p>Quỳnh wakes on horseback, immediately recognising the feeling of shaking back and forth as the animal under her gallops on.</p><p>Other than her usual rides, however, she can't remember actually getting <em>onto</em> the horse, and she isn't alone on it, either... a strong arm is wrapped around her waist, and Quỳnh jerks upright when she remembers her last conscious moments.</p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>~</p>
</blockquote><p>
  <em>Lying on the desert sand, Quỳnh was shaking in the heat, or maybe the hot air around her only made her feel like she was.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sweat had stopped clinging to her skin hours ago, no water left for her to lose a single drop of it.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>‘Maybe this is it’ she remembers thinking, ‘maybe once I have dried out entirely and there is nothing left of me but dust the gods will let me be at peace…’</em>
</p><p>
  <em>A while later, however- and there was no way to tell the time at all, only infinite pain and heat- a shadow fell over her, and as a waterskin was pressed to her lips, she looked into the eyes of a woman she had until then only seen in her dreams before exhaustion overcame her and she had fallen unconscious.</em>
</p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <em>~</em>
  </p>
</blockquote><p>Now, the woman lets the mare slow to a trot when Quỳnh jerks upright against her.</p><p>"Good, you're awake. I was afraid I was going to have to ride all the way to my camp with you passed out here."</p><p>She speaks flawless Vietnamese, barely even an accent noticeable, though Quỳnh knows that she is not a native. Knows this, not only because of the woman's foreign features, but because she has dreamt of her- the goddess in her dreams, winning battles in foreign places, slaying and being slain but always coming back to life. Have the gods answered her prayers? Have they sent this goddess to take her from this life, that she hadn’t managed to escape from alone?</p><p>But the woman doesn’t feel like a god, all human warmth behind her back, and neither does she sound like one, talking about mundane things like returning to the camp of hers… And when Quỳnh is entirely honest with herself, she never did look like a god, not even in the most fascinating of dreams.</p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <em>~ </em>
  </p>
</blockquote><p>
  <em>When Quỳnh had been a much younger woman, although a full member of society already for several decades, she had had a terrible illness. By every notion, she should have died from it.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>‘I suppose you have no skill to fight off illness either, huh,’ she had thought in regards to her soulmate, the person who had given her so much and whom Quỳnh already loved fiercely without ever knowing their identity. Most people managed to track down their soulmate through shared languages and skills, but hers had not only been speaking the tongues of distant lands, but they had also simply shared too many skills with her for her to even know which occupation the other might have had or where they had grown up. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Some of Quỳnh’s friends had said that she must have several soulmates, then- something not entirely unheard of, yet with how many things Quỳnh had been able to do through the soulmate’s bond, there must have been an entire army of soulmates sharing abilities with her if they had all been normal people.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Then, she had made her peace with dying while still in the dark about her soulmate’s identity. She had known that she would not survive the night. Quỳnh had only been glad that at least her family was taken care of- her siblings all in respectable jobs Quỳnh had gotten them- by using her skill of diplomacy, talking to anyone offering work, and by teaching her brothers and sisters what abilities they needed for the jobs herself. Her parents had already died a few years ago, and there was no-one else she would be leaving behind.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Closing her eyes, Quỳnh had waited for death to arrive.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Instead of dying, however, that night Quỳnh had then had the first of many dreams that would accompany her through the next years, decades, then centuries.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>When she had awoken, she had thought nothing of it- she had had more important things to worry about than a strange dream, like the fact that she had woken up at all!</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Her miraculous recovery from the illness had had everyone even more in awe of her than before. ‘The gods have spared her,’ she had heard a cousin whisper, and others had wondered whether her survival might be a lucky omen for the entire settlement. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Quỳnh had only been glad to be alive. To have gotten a second chance. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>In the next night, however, she had dreamed again, and this time she remembered every second of it when she woke: a woman on horseback, shouting in a foreign language yet completely understandable to Quỳnh, slaying a man with a sword, freeing his prisoners. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Quỳnh had never met the woman, had never heard the language before- yet, she had been able to understand every word. Like a soulmate would. And it had not just been the language- the way the woman had moved, her dexterity with a weapon, her easy grace on the horse- Quỳnh had seen herself in that, her own movements mirrored with a stranger’s face. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Her <span class="u">soulmate’s</span> face.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Still in bed as, despite her feeling entirely well, the nurses hadn’t yet trusted the illness not to come back, Quỳnh had told her visiting friends about her dream. She only got laughed at. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>“You don’t dream of your soulmates, Quỳnh,” Hạnh had told her in a belittling voice. Later, Quỳnh would realise that she might have been jealous of her- of her skills, of her status, of surviving the illness so easily that had slain two of Hạnh‘s younger sisters. “You find them, or you don’t. Nurse! I think Quỳnh can’t have recovered as well as we thought, she’s still delirious!”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Despite their reactions, Quỳnh at first stayed convinced of her nightly apparition’s identity, though she no longer voiced those opinions aloud. Every night, she kept dreaming of her, and it all fit together- every language the woman spoke, Quỳnh understood, many she already recognised from trying to figure out her soulmate’s identity by identifying languages when she had been younger. Almost every skill the woman displayed, Quỳnh had already figured out herself, and if not, as most often was the case in dreams of combat scenarios, she would try the woman’s moves the next day and find she did not have to practice them at all.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Then, weeks later, the woman had died in a dream and Quỳnh had come awake screaming. Not because she believed her soulmate to be dead- no, quite the opposite: because the woman in her dreams had come back to life. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>‘It’s not my soulmate, then.’ Quỳnh had thought to herself. ‘It must be a goddess, someone with a higher power, when she defies death like that. That she has all mine and my soulmate’s skills must simply be because she has all the abilities in the world.’ </em>
</p><p>
  <em>She never did make the connection to her own recovery from illness that didn’t yet lie too far in the past. Instead, for her own peace of mind, Quỳnh started thinking of the woman and her soulmate as two separate things- her bonded soul whose skills she has, and the goddess in her dreams. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>She had never been quite sure whether she had been trying to convince herself or whether she couldn’t stand to think anything else.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>This belief stayed only this firm until she got grievously injured herself in a battle, and simply walked away without a scratch. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>If the woman in her dreams was a goddess, so was she- and much more likely, her soulmate had shared her ability to defy death with her.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Still, she didn’t find her. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Around her, her friends moved away to their soulmates or had theirs move to them, starting families, growing old… well, some grew old and died without meeting their other soul, a few without even trying to, it wasn’t unheard of. But they, too, lived out their lives.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Quỳnh stayed the same, unchanged, untouched by the passing of time, and alone.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>She, too, started to travel to find her soulmate, but no matter where she went, it never looked like the places in her dreams, and even when she recognised the language, her soulmate could have simply learned it when passing through the area eons ago.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>None of it felt real to her anymore. Quỳnh started believing that the woman, her soulmate, all of it, was nothing but a figment of her imagination.</em>
</p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <em>~</em>
  </p>
</blockquote><p>Now, Quỳnh stares at the woman- who-might-be-a-goddess, who looks so familiar and doesn’t feel like a stranger to her at all.</p><p>Making sure that Quỳnh’s grip in the horse’s mane is secure, the woman jumps to the ground, extending her hand to Quỳnh to help her down also. Quỳnh would not have needed help nor instruction on how to hold on, but she does enjoy the woman’s rough, warm grip as she tangles her finger’s in the mane.</p><p>“Who are you?” Quỳnh asks her in a language of which she doesn’t even know the name, but looking at the face in front of her it somehow felt like the fitting one to use.</p><p>“I am Andromache the Scythian,” the woman answers, in the same language and with a wide smile, “and I believe you are bonded to me, in more ways than one.”</p><p>Quỳnh takes her offered hand with a smile. “I believe the same.”</p><p>The prospect of staying alive a while longer already doesn't seem to be as daunting anymore.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>If you liked this, please be so kind and let me know! </p><p>I really like this 'verse and I'm also interested in Andy's perspective: how she might have thought that she doesn't have a soulmate, or thinks she might have had one and would have never noticed because they wouldn't have given her any additional skills... and also Andronilynh potential, I already hinted that multiple soulmates aren't impossible, and I would love to see that dynamic here too! So yeah, there might be more to this at some point, but no promises! Leave a comment and I'll let you know if/when I post more :)</p><p>Also on <a href="https://lilolilyr.tumblr.com/post/645206550637608960">tumblr</a>.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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